Printing

I have an Epson Stylus C82, and printing using the parallel port was fairly straight forward. I enabled || support in /etc/rc.d/rc.modules by uncommenting the following:

	#### Parallel printer support ###
if cat /proc/ksyms | grep "\[lp\]" 1> /dev/null 2> /dev/null ; then
  echo "lp support built-in, not loading module" > /dev/null
else
  if [ -r /lib/modules/$RELEASE/misc/lp.o \
       -o -r /lib/modules/$RELEASE/misc/lp.o.gz \
       -o -r /lib/modules/$RELEASE/kernel/drivers/char/lp.o \
       -o -r /lib/modules/$RELEASE/kernel/drivers/char/lp.o.gz ]; then
    /sbin/modprobe lp
  fi
fi

And I enabled lp at startup by making /etc/rc.d/rc.lprng executable so rc.M will start it during the boot sequence. You can check to see if lpr is active by seeing if lp shows up in /proc/devices.

bash-2.05b# cat /proc/devices
Character devices:
  1 mem
  2 pty
  3 ttyp
  4 ttyS
  5 cua
  6 lp
  7 vcs
 10 misc
 13 input
 14 sound
 29 fb
109 lvm
116 alsa
128 ptm
129 ptm
136 pts
137 pts
162 raw
171 ieee1394
180 usb
254 pcmcia

Block devices:
  1 ramdisk
  3 ide0
  7 loop
  9 md
 22 ide1
 58 lvm

Test to see if the printer is connected properly with

  echo Hello > cat > /dev/lp0

Your printer should do something. Maybe even print Hello.

I had a bit of trouble at this point and after looking around the net there were comments about CUPS not playing well with lpr. So I removed them both and reinstalled lpr (removepkg and pkgtool) to make sure all the links were correct.

Next run /usr/share/apsfilter/.SETUP and follow the steps. Here is the configuration file it produced in /etc/apsfilter/SETUP.cfg.

PRINTER='stp/escp2-c80'
RESOLUTION='600x600'
COLOR='full'
PAPER='letter'
METHOD='auto'
QUALITY='medium'
INTERFACE='parallel'
DEVICE='/dev/lp0'
BAUDRATE=''
HANDSHAKE=''
WORDLENGTH=''
PARITY=''
STARTBITS=''
STOPBITS=''
SMB_SERVER=''
SMB_IP=''
SMB_PRINTER=''
SMB_WORKGROUP=''
SMB_USER=''
SMB_PASSWD=''
NCP_SERVER=''
NCP_PRINTER=''
NCP_USER=''
NCP_PASSWD=''
rm=''
rp=''

Printing seem to go fine after this. For your reading enjoyment I have included my /etc/printcap:

# APS1_BEGIN:printer1
# - don't delete start label for apsfilter printer1
# - no other printer defines between BEGIN and END LABEL
lp|stp/escp2-c80;r=600x600;q=medium;c=full;p=letter;m=auto:\
    :lp=/dev/lp0:\
    :if=/etc/apsfilter/basedir/bin/apsfilter:\
    :sd=/var/spool/lpd/lp:\
    :lf=/var/spool/lpd/lp/log:\
    :af=/var/spool/lpd/lp/acct:\
    :mx#0:\
    :sh:
# APS1_END - don't delete this